Engineers develop new way to know liars' intent

Dartmouth engineering researchers have developed a new approach for detecting a speaker's intent to mislead. The approach's framework, which could be developed to extract opinion from "fake news," among other uses, was recently published as part of a paper in Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence.

Although previous studies have examined deception, this is possibly the first study to look at a speaker's intent. The researchers posit that while a true story can be manipulated into various deceiving forms, the intent, rather than the content of the communication, determines whether the communication is deceptive or not. For example, the speaker could be misinformed or make a wrong assumption, meaning the speaker made an unintentional error but did not attempt to deceive.

"Deceptive intent to mislead listeners on purpose poses a much larger threat than unintentional mistakes," said Eugene Santos Jr., co-author and professor of engineering at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. "To the best of our knowledge, our algorithm is the only method that detects deception and at the same time discriminates malicious acts from benign acts."

The researchers developed a unique approach and resulting algorithm that can tell deception apart from all benign communications by retrieving the universal features of deceptive reasoning. However, the framework is currently limited by the amount of data needed to measure a speaker's deviation from their past arguments; the study used data from a 2009 survey of 100 participants on their opinions on controversial topics, as well as a 2011 dataset of 800 real and 400 fictitious reviews of the same 20 hotels.

Santos believes the framework could be further developed to help readers distinguish and closely examine the intent of "fake news," allowing the reader to determine if a reasonable, logical argument is used or if opinion plays a strong role. In further studies, Santos hopes to examine the ripple effect of misinformation, including its impacts.

In the study, the researchers use the popular 2001 film Ocean's Eleven to illustrate how the framework can be used to examine a deceiver's arguments, which in reality may go against his true beliefs, resulting in a falsified final expectation. For example, in the movie, a group of thieves break into a bank vault while simultaneously revealing to the owner that he is being robbed in order to negotiate. The thieves supply the owner with false information, namely that they will only take half the money if the owner doesn't call police. However, the thieves expect the owner to call police, which he does, so the thieves then disguise themselves as police to steal the entirety of the vault contents.

Because Ocean's Eleven is a scripted film, viewers can be sure of the thieves' intent -- to steal all of the money -- and how it conflicts with what they tell the owner -- that they will only take half. This illustrates how the thieves were able to deceive the owner and anticipate his actions due to the fact that the thieves and owner had different information and therefore perceived the scene differently.

"People expect things to work in a certain way," said Santos, "just like the thieves knew that the owner would call police when he found out he was being robbed. So, in this scenario, the thieves used that knowledge to convince the owner to come to a certain conclusion and follow the standard path of expectations. They forced their deception intent so the owner would reach the conclusions the thieves desired."

In popular culture, verbal and non-verbal behaviors such as facial expressions are often used to determine if someone is lying, but the co-authors note that those cues are not always reliable.

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Children told lies by parents subsequently lie more as adults, face adjustment difficulty

Parent scolding child concept.

"If you don't behave, I'll call the police," is a lie that parents might use to get their young children to behave. Parents' lies elicit compliance in the short term, but a new psychology study led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) suggests that they are associated with detrimental effects when the child becomes an adult.

The research team asked 379 Singaporean young adults whether their parents lied to them when they were children, how much they lie to their parents now, and how well they adjust to adulthood challenges.

Adults who reported being lied to more as children, were more likely to report lying to their parents in their adulthood. They also said they faced greater difficulty in meeting psychological and social challenges. Adjustment difficulties include disruptiveness, conduct problems, experience of guilt and shame, as well as selfish and manipulative character.

The research, done in collaboration with Canada's University of Toronto, the United States' University of California, San Diego, and China's Zhejiang Normal University, was published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology in September.

Lead author Assistant Professor Setoh Peipei from NTU Singapore's School of Social Sciences said, "Parenting by lying can seem to save time especially when the real reasons behind why parents want children to do something is complicated to explain. When parents tell children that 'honesty is the best policy', but display dishonesty by lying, such behaviour can send conflicting messages to their children. Parents' dishonesty may eventually erode trust and promote dishonesty in children."

"Our research suggests that parenting by lying is a practice that has negative consequences for children when they grow up. Parents should be aware of these potential downstream implications and consider alternatives to lying, such as acknowledging children's feelings, giving information so children know what to expect, offering choices and problem-solving together, to elicit good behaviour from children."

How the study was done

379 Singaporean young adults completed four online questionnaires.

The first questionnaire asked participants to recall if their parents told them lies that related to eating; leaving and/or staying; children's misbehaviour; and spending money. Some examples of such lies are "If you don't come with me now, I will leave you here by yourself" and "I did not bring money with me today, we can come back another day."

The second questionnaire asked participants to indicate how frequently as adults they lied to their parents. It asked about lies in relation to their activities and actions; prosocial lies (or lies intended to benefit others); and exaggerations about events.

Lastly, participants filled in two questionnaires that measured their self-reported psychosocial maladjustment and tendency to behave selfishly and impulsively.

The analysis found that parenting by lying could place children at a greater risk of developing problems that the society frowns upon, such as aggression, rule-breaking and intrusive behaviours.

Some limitations of the study include relying on what young adults report about their retrospective experience of parents' lying. "Future research can explore using multiple informants, such as parents, to report on the same variables," suggested Asst Prof Setoh.

The authors also pointed out that as the study is correlational in design, which aims to find out the naturally occurring relationships between variables, they are unable to draw causal inferences.

Another area yet to be investigated would be the nature of the lies or goals of the parent. Asst Prof Setoh said, "It is possible that a lie to assert the parents' power, such as saying 'If you don't behave, we will throw you into the ocean to feed the fish', may be more related to children's adjustment difficulties as adults, compared to lies that target children's compliance, e.g. 'there is no more candy in the house'.

"Authority assertion over children is a form of psychological intrusiveness, which may undermine children's sense of autonomy and convey rejection, ultimately undermining children's emotional well-being. Future research should examine the nature of the lies and goals of the parents so that researchers can suggest what kind of lies to avoid, and what kind of truth-telling parents should engage in."

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